


The Velveteen Soldier

by chicagoartnerd



Category: Captain America (Movies), Marvel Cinematic Universe
Genre: Dark, Dubious Consent, F/M, Fractured Fairy Tale, Gen, M/M, Past Torture, Rape/Non-con Elements
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-06-08
Updated: 2014-06-08
Packaged: 2018-02-03 21:58:41
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,622
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1758017
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/chicagoartnerd/pseuds/chicagoartnerd
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>There once was a soldier and in the beginning he was very good at what he did...</p>
            </blockquote>





	The Velveteen Soldier

**Author's Note:**

> I read this creepy version of [The Velveteen Rabbit](http://the-toast.net/2014/03/26/the-velveteen-rabbit/) last night and drew some disturbing parallels. I'm so sorry. Also I have recently realized I like writing children's fairy tales because they are already so dark and twisted that I don't have to do much to make them worse. 
> 
> Follow for more ficlets and feelings @ chicagoartnerd

There once was a soldier and in the beginning he was very good at what he did.

He was the best shot in his unit, could snipe a man out from 300 ft away no problem. He followed orders and he protected the men who were his friends. He had loved someone.

That was how he died.

When he awoke he was different. He had an arm that glinted like so many knives. His handlers told him how important he was, they petted him, played with him, told him he was theirs. He was an asset, a child of winter; he finally knew his true nature.

And for a time he was valued, they needed him, he was appreciated. He brought them secrets and bloodied bones.

They prized him above all others and used his skills accordingly.

With a jolt of the clock hand he was forgotten and tossed away like a children’s toy, frozen undying for many years. One of the only things The Winter Soldier remembered what it felt like to be ignored, he did not forget it.

For a long time he lay sleeping in the cryo-tank because he was “unpredictable” and “unstable.” Unlike the 28 girls who danced on their toes; who spun pirouettes until their feet turned to crushed red satin.

The ballerinas were perfect where he was flawed. Conditioned from birth to serve their mother winter and her master death. He was silently gagging on his ice-coated tongue while they smiled and bat their razor eyelashes. The girls danced until they died with guns in their fists or blades in their backs. They all eventually choked on garott strings or poisoned words.

Only one was worth keeping, training.

He met the Red Headed Woman soon after he woke for a second time.

He trained her to be a soldier even though she already knew how to be a spy.

She was the only one who was kind to him. He watched her wear many faces and one day he asked where she had stolen them from. No one and It’s not like that. The Soldier sat in silence and she knew he had not liked her answer.

They fought others and each other.

The Red Headed Woman saw through the empty meat of him, she had the deadliest eyes of all of them. Together they killed the things that were good in each other as much as they did the shadows surrounding them.

He loved her with pain.

She cut him and he begged for it.

They were opposing and coming together with every slash of the knife, every bullet.

One day he asked her what was Real.

_Nothing. Everything. Real isn’t how you are made it is what you become when you are loved by someone._

He wanted to know if it was supposed to hurt.

_Sometimes. But when you are Real you don’t mind the pain because it means you are alive._

Can you hurt someone else by becoming Real?

_Yes._ She told him the truth always, that was her cruel sort of kindness.

Can you take it from someone?

She looked at him with a single caliber eye. _Yes._

What I meant was if someone was already Real could you take it out of them and put it in yourself, leave them empty and dead on the concrete floor like so many others?

She turned away from him then. _No. You can’t make yourself from the remains of someone else._

He could not tell if she was lying to herself or to him.

The next day she vanished and his handlers made certain that the cold squeezed the breath from his lungs with unkind fists. He didn’t know how long he was gone for. It didn’t really matter.

The blinding two pronged kiss of the wipe chair was merciful compared to becoming Real. He embraced its electric heat and became a weapon once more. They used him, drained him of blood and life, to build an Empire. A city of glittering black under a red moon sky.

He kneeled before their thrones, took what they gave him, and never uttered a word. They owned him body and soul and he let them. There was a solace in obedience that the turmoil of rebellion could not compare to. He was The Asset once more.

But then there was The Man on the Bridge. No. The Boy from Brooklyn. He knew him.

They beat him, recalibrated and reconfigured him, they saw a bit of Real in him and stomped it to bits beneath their booted heels. He was his mission, there was only one goal now.

Or so he thought.

There was something else wrong with him that they hadn’t found and killed. The Boy he once knew called out to it and it rumbled back to him in a voice that wasn’t his. The Soldier had no voice other than the reload click of his rifle and the howling of the wind.

The Boy had always been sick when he knew him.

Wracked with pain, every breath a small agony, swollen joints in between thin loose bones. He had held him while he burned under the weight of his own humanity. People beat The Boy for what he believed in, spat on him, looked down on him, but he did not bend. They wondered aloud why he was still alive, why he could not be like other men.

The Soldier was filled with rage when he thought of all the people who didn’t see The Boy the way he did. He had watched him die a thousand tiny deaths and stole his breath each time.

Even though The Boy was dying he was blindingly alive; they both had been Real then.

They had taken that from him.

The Soldier almost killed him himself but he was the only person in the entire world who could make him Real again. He could sense it now. So he pulled him from the unforgiving water and dragged him to the shore, and he waited. The programming was telling him to report for a debrief, every instinct they had honed and hammered into him screamed to listen and to submit.

There was a sliver in his chest that made him wait.

A tiny bit of the Real he had taken from the boy.

Someone long ago had told him you couldn’t take the Real from someone else and put it inside of you. They had been wrong.

He followed The Boy home like a dog. And he let him hold him, hands in his hair, crying. Breathing like he used to before he would collapse in a fit of coughing. Now instead of drawing in needles he breathed in The Soldier and sobbed.

The Boy told him all about their time together in Brooklyn, every secret whispered in the dark between threadbare sheets, every bruise and scrape and kiss. He told him these stories like he should remember them, like he did remember them and The Soldier tried.

He fiercely attempted to pull the Real out of The Boy and shove it into his chest. Stitch the ragged edges and bleed them into one another.

The Soldier held him under, bit down until he left bloody purples bruises on his neck and hips. He was vicious in his love but The Boy refused to fight back.

There was no resistance and he chafed under it.

The Red Headed Woman was there as well. One day he asked her if she was Real.

She stared at him with blue button eyes. _Yes. I made myself that way long ago._

He wanted to know how. She did not fight him when he pinned her; instead she pursed her lips and didn’t smile.

There was no answer in her mouth. No easy way out.

He went to The Boy and bent low for him, pleaded for a mission, a task to prove himself. Something to make him Real. But there was no answer for him there either.

Only sadness and rage.

The Boy was no longer sick but The Soldier was.

Anyone could see his strings and stitching pulling apart now. Compared to the rest of The Boy’s companions he was tainted. some of them told him the truth of The Soldier but he wouldn't hear it, he shouted them down. _Don't you dare say that. He's not a thing. He's Real!_  They stopped trying to sway him after that, they were Real and full of life and The Boy smiled when he was near them.  The Soldier was unclean.

And yet he refused to wash his hands after playing with him. Refused to go inside from the poisonous rain he made him stand in. The Boy loved him and took him with him wherever he went regardless. It made him ache in a place where no boot had ever grazed him.

He wanted so badly to be Real that he choked the life from The Boy like a creeping vine. Squeezed him tighter, wound himself around him until The Boy couldn’t see the sun to grow.

Once again he didn’t fight against him to breathe. Together they sunk beneath the waves and that act in itself was Real.

His name wasn’t real, his face was borrowed from a time he couldn’t recall, his arm had been bought with agony and soldered bone, but suddenly this feeling he given to The Boy had made him Real.

He was free to run, to open his face to the sun, to die if it pleased him.

It didn’t. Not anymore. Nothing pleased him other than caring for The Boy.

The Soldier made the choice to serve this time. Now that he was Real.


End file.
